Sometimes this stuff is beyond parody:
In a shocking development this evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “triggered a rarely used procedural option informally called the “nuclear option” to change the Senate rules,” The Hill reports.
“The Democratic leader had become fed up with Republican demands for votes on motions to suspend the rules after the Senate had voted to end a filibuster.”
Roll Call reports a “visibly upset” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “said Reid was fundamentally turning the Senate into the House and was setting the precedent that the minority wouldn’t have a voice after 60 votes are invoked.”
Deliberately sabotaging the economy for political gain, that gets a shrug. But some minor parliamentary move to get a jobs bill through the Senate, that is shocking.
KG
Wasn’t Mitch McConnell and his ilk talking about the nuclear option a few years ago? I recall Hewitt preaching right before the Dems took back the majority.
Dee Loralei
Yea, McConnell and the Senate Republicans demanding a 60 vote threshold, is ” normal” the Senate Democrats, the majority party using normal Senate rules to pass any damned bill get’s called obstructionist! Or underhanded. God, I loathe Republicans.
Cain
O/T: The stray cat (who i affectionately called ‘yellow’) has not shown up now in nearly 24 hours. :( She’s always shows up and is usually around our house all day. I’m worried. I’m even more freaked out because it’s like a week a year ago my first cat disappeared.
Also, fuck off, Mitch, you gabbering buffoon.. you can just shut the fuck up and take it. YOu’d be pursuing the nuclear option on your own if it was the other way around.
Will
Two years too fucking late, Harry. What. The. Hell.
patrick II
So, where has this “minor parliamentary procedure” been for the lsst three years? Why is it being used now? Is there something unique about the particular track of this bill, or are we just naive for listening to the dems complain about the 60 vote requirement for the last three years?
Dee Loralei
@KG: It wasn’t McConnell per se, that was when Bill Frist, the cat killer, was the Majority leader! They wanted to stop Democratic obstruction of lifetime sinecures for their Federal Judges. But will they allow Obama to have most of his nominations go through? Fucking No! I loathe Republicans.
Wag
Over at TPM they were concerned about this precedent and how the GOP might abuse it after becoming a majority in 2012.
Fuck that. We need to use every option no matter how unpalatable or risky in order to PREVENT the GOPfrom regaining their majority.
Get some stuff through the Senate that we can use to paint the GOP into some corners. Something that’ll make it clear who their masters are
KG
@Dee Loralei: yeah, that’s what I’m remembering… just had to engage in some google-fu.
What amazes me is that these assholes who act like nothing’s wrong now are forgetting that when W first took office, the Senate was 50-50, yet all sorts of shit got passed that Bush wanted.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@patrick II:
Uhm, this had nothing to do with the 60 vote requirement. This was GOP obstructionism even after the 60 votes have been gotten.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
That’s because, once the debate has been closed, the minority isn’t supposed to have any power. It means you lost, Mitch.
Dee Loralei
@Will: @patrick II: I agree with you both.Harry Reid has been all sorts of fail as Majority Leader, but he has also gotten a bunch of really great things through the Senate. He could have had the rules changed in Jan., when the new Senate convened, and yet he didn’t.
And yet, on this Bill, he went to the mattresses. I don’t get it at all.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Dee Loralei:
He didn’t have the votes. There are too many Democrats that value their parochial power more than they value their party.
patrick II
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Thanks JMN. But I am not sure why then it is being compared to by some the “nuclear option” in which the repubs threatened to get rid of the filibuster — at least for the judicial approval process.
And the underlying power of the procedure — that a majority of over 50 could change the senate rules at any time seems to imply that they could have overturned other rules as well including the filibuster.
Dee Loralei
@KG: That’s because Dems believe in governance and in governing. They believe that a President deserves to get his platform heard and voted on, that by winning his election, a president proves his platform is popular.
And there are always Dems who buy into the shit the 1% pushes.That’s the problem with the Big Tent.
piratedan
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): ding ding ding…. he had cats to herd, asshats like Nelson and Landrieu and Manchin had to get on board after three years of playing both ends before he could count on them to vote as needed.
Will
@patrick II:
Exactly. Why the hell was this so important to deploy now over some watered-down jobs bill, when it apparently wasn’t so important over frickin’ universal healthcare?
And don’t get me wrong–I want the jobs bill to succeed. But all of us know it won’t, that it will die in the House (if not the Senate), that it is really just a political weapon. Not so for the health care legislation, which could have been dramatically improved with this tactic.
amk
As long as fifth columnist fourth estate is alive, america will be doomed.
Dee Loralei
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I know he didn’t have the votes. The Senate and The Electoral College are the least democratic institutions we have. And I despair.
But the Senators must make the Senate Rules. And I have no power to change that.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@patrick II:
They had the votes to do this. Reid couldn’t have changed the filibuster per se (which this really isn’t) because he didn’t have the votes. The people to blame are Democrats, but not Reid. Think Landrieu, Manchin and Nelson for ideological reasons and guys like Chuck Schumer because he’s in love with himself.
Swishalicious
this has nothing to do with the goddamned nuclear option.
the bill came up for cloture. 60 votes were required to pass. 60 votes were achieved.
THEN the “jobs bill” was offered, unamended (thus splitting democrats who want to make changes, most notably how it’s funded – millionaire’s tax v. other means that i now forget because i am a drunk), as an amendment. amendments can’t be amended during this procedure. so democrats would have to take an ugly, ugly vote against the president’s unamended jobs bill (it wouldn’t pass).
so, the chair asked for a ruling from the parliamentarian, since amendments must be germane to the underlying bill, which was chinese currency manipulation (a sure pass). the parliamentarian ruled it in order, and reid called a vote to challenge that ruling, which only requires 51 votes to pass. he won.
that’s not the nuclear option. the nuclear option uses 51 votes to declare cloture out of order. by the way, cloture is unconstitutional. jussayin’.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Wag:
you’ll never win a prizefight, if you are trying to not get hit.
Yutsano
I’m gonna need to run thank-you notes upstairs at work tomorrow. My Senators r teh awsum.
MikeJ
@Swishalicious:
Uh, no. The constitution explicitly leaves the running of congress up to congress. The senate can make whatever silly rules they want.
MikeJ
@Cain:
good thoughts for the kitty.
I call the stray that comes to watch my bird feeder Attenborough.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m picturing a bespectacled, turkey-waddled tortoise, for some reason wearing a top hat, angrily addressing a crowd of crickets and toads
Yutsano
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is…shockingly accurate.
Kola Noscopy
@patrick II:
You sir, are beginning to see the light…
patrick II
@Swishalicious:
I was just quoting the linked article. They claimed “nuclear option” and that Reid actually changed senate rules by vote. Your explanation seems more reasonable.
I would contend cloture is constitutional — the filibuster isn’t. Allowing representatives of as little as 12% of the population to stop a bill is not a democracy.
Kola Noscopy
@KG:
Yeah…isn’t that weird?
mclaren
Time for a Preston Brooks moment?
— The caning of Senator Charles Sumner, 1851
Chris
OMG — He’s turning the Senate into the House!
Scott P.
The GOS is reporting that this isn’t true — the Democrats were willing to go ahead with the AJA vote to get the currency bill passed, but the Republicans then dropped that tactic and tried to tack on another amendment.
Tim Connor
@Dee Loralei:
God, I loathe Republicans.
This should be a mantra for anyone capable of elementary thought and observation.
Catpause
The fact that Pelosi and Reid didn’t go to the mattresses on day one of the Obama presidency will be judged by history as their abject failure as leaders. All these current student council/Robert’s rules shenanigans aside, I am stunned by the impotence of our Democratic Party. Stunned.
Chris
@Tim Connor:
I’m at the point where I rank them alongside monarchists, communists, fascists and islamists as “ideologies that are so fucking awful either by design, by incompetence, or both, that they should never be considered an option under any circumstances.”
Sorry for the drama, but no, I’m really not interested in reliving all of the worst moments of the nineteenth century concentrated into a single package.
wilfred
10 years today in Afghanistan.
10 years.
Shrug.
Comrade Luke
@Catpause:
I can’t really blame Pelosi for anything. She was ready. It was Reid that was a useless tool.
Scott P.
I don’t really think you know much about how Congress operates. It doesn’t operate like a parliamentary system. That’s not because our politicians have been failures since 1792, it’s because that’s the way the system is set up.
Sure, in theory if a very large number of people wanted to change the system, they could. Congress makes it’s own rules. But any large institution has a great deal of internal inertia. Look at the friggin’ Electoral College.
I would really like to see progressives get behind institutional changes like eliminating the filibuster. That would do a world of good. But even then it would be a slow process that could take decades. Are we ready to put in the commitment?
Bago
The decade’s long war?
wilfred
Reid is actually taking a stand on the detainee provisions of the 2012 NDAA, threatening to block it unless those provisions are changed.
One of those is McCain’s inclusion of placing all civilians, including AMericans, accused of terrorism to be placed in military custody.
Brian S
That’s not the greatest example since getting rid of it would require a Constitutional amendment. There are potential workarounds, and there have been changes in the ways states choose their electors over time, changes that took a long time due to, as you note, internal inertia, and I would add, a desire by the powerful to retain power.
magurakurin
@patrick II: see post #20. This has nothing to do with the filibuster.
worn
@Swishalicious:
Ya, and loved this little wordsnest from TPM earlier this evening:
Mack Lyons
@Wag:
What made those people think the GOP weren’t going to abuse that option anyway, regardless of whether or not the Dems used it?
Sitting on your hands for fear of your actions allowing the GOP to do naughty things never works. Contrary to what some Democrats believe, the GOP does not operate on an honor system.
Shlemizel
@wilfred:
We have always been at war with Eastasisa
Xenos
@Dee Loralei: I think when it came to the public option, for example, there never was even 50 votes. Not using this version of the ‘nuclear option’ was not spineless on Reid’s part, it was smart planning.
That is pretty depressing. And as for certain blue dogs, they can be loathsome, too. Just part of the time, not all the time, like Republicans. How I loath Republicans.
That is a pretty good catchphrase, by the way. One can work it into just about any comment.
Xenos
@mclaren: There are more than 350 towns and cities in Massachusetts. Most of them have a street named after Sumner. He was hero and a truly righteous man – the sort we could use a lot more of today.
Villago Delenda Est
@Will:
This. Just this.
What, did Reid’s spine transplant finally take?
Baud
@Swishalicious:
Agreed this has nothing to do with the filibuster 60-vote rule. If I understand correctly, what Reid did is currently permitted under Senate rules. To fix the filibuster would require a change in the Senate rules.
Reid could not have used this procedure to get the public option passed, even if he had 50 votes for it.
jobs
Reid should have modified the filibuster in January 2009.
Failing that Democrats should have passed any and everything the could using reconciliation. (Including a public option in ACCA) It does not matter what Reid actually changed. If the Republicans retake the Senate they will indeed use the nuclear option and say Reid did it first. Just as they insist that the final version of ACCA was the first no budget resolution passed under reconciliation.
Ian
@Catpause:
Totally. Fuck actual governing. Fuck getting 535 people (or a majority of them) to agree. Why have a legislative body at all?
bob h
And why not attach Richard Cordray’s nomination vote to the bill, as well?
ChrisNYC
The “nuclear option” refers to the process — changing Senate rules by a simple majority vote. Which Reid did yesterday, but not to get rid of the filibuster.
Here’s what happened — the Senate voted Monday to put the China bill to a vote. Yesterday McConnell tried to add, as an amendment, the first version of the jobs bill, which the Dems will not vote for because they want a different version. The way McConnell did that was to make a motion to “suspend the rules” — specifically, the rules requiring that amendments be related to the bill being amended. That’s regular procedure. McConnell would not have won that vote — it needs a 2/3 majority, i.e. Dems, to pass. However, had that vote happened, the GOP would have said that the *Dems* voted “against” the jobs bill — we tried to get a vote on it and they voted against it. To stop that from happening, Reid said that the McConnell motion was out of order. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that McConnell’s ploy was within Senate rules (which it was). Reid went to the full Senate to “appeal” (overrule) the Parliamentarian’s ruling — which they did, by a bare majority. That’s the nuclear option. That changed Senate rules — but just the rule that allowed a minority to tack on non-related amendments to bills in this way that McConnell used.
The same thing *could* happen with the filibuster but they don’t have votes for that changing of the rules. I’m guessing they got the votes for this because it results in just a small decrease in power that the minority has, rather than getting rid of the filibuster, which would be a huge piece of leverage to vote away.
Emma
@Scott P.: No. Democrats march and scream for limited periods of time in order to make one change, and once they got it, they seem to think they’ve accomplished all that needs to be done. Very few have either the foresight to realize that a battle between philosophies is basically the forever war, OR the stones to stick to it, decade after decade, like the Republicans have done for the past thirty years, in order to make systemic changes.
Emma
@jobs: HE.DIDN’T.HAVE.THE.VOTES. His OWN.DAMN.PARTY wouldn’t vote for it. Which part of this don’t you people get?
ChrisNYC
I get the frustration with Dems but I don’t get this assumption of bad faith. That they don’t want to just ram through stuff. I’m not saying they’re angels but they are neither horrible devils. They have to work through procedure so it gets into all this detailed, arcane stuff, because that’s what happens when you try to actually do something.
Don’t people have this in their own jobs? Like for tech people, don’t you confront people who don’t understand your job who say, “Just do it. Just fix it.” And then you think, “Well to just fix it, we have to first do x and y and z but we can’t because g over there would get screwed so we have to go about it in this seemingly crazy roundabout way.” I think a lot of this stuff is the same. Easy enough to say fix it — how to fix it, that’s the thing.
Reid, I think, is really a pro on these procedural things and has done a ton of them and shouldn’t get slammed for “weakness.” I just think the assumption of bad faith from Dems — while worth considering — is a bad starting place. Seeps so much energy away and makes people just want to give up and check out.
Svensker
Up or down vote, mofos. Up or down vote.
name required
@Emma: That’s exactly right.
TenguPhule
Up or down vote, Does the blade of Madam Gullet stay up or come down on GOP necks?
Triassic Sands
I assume that McConnell is deeply upset by the dominance of the Republicans in the House, where Democrats have no voice.
irrelevant
The public option was traded away very early in the process.
The Senate was never going to be asked to vote for a bill containing it even if they were 60 votes let alone 50.